QUESTIONS WORTH ASKING THE "SOUND MONEY" CROWD, RON PAUL INCLUDED: The so-called "United States Taxpayers' Party," with articles of faith and known connexions to racist, white supremacist and other weird and unwholesome elements, advanced as part of its 1992 campaign platform the refinancing of the National Debt (currently estimated @ some $9 trillion) through a series of debt-security issues backed by gold reserves held @ the Treasury's gold vaults in Ft, Knox, Kentucky and other gold depositories (including those @ West Point, New York as supplanted the New York Subtreasury several years back).

I'm not sure if such is still held dear as an article of faith by the post-9/11 "patriot" crowd for the sake of Indecision 2008, but you never know.

Which prompts Your Correspondent to raise some questions rather interesting--questions worth asking your local "sound money" Zealot and True Believer:

• How much in gold reserves do you know of as are currently in storage @ Ft. Knox and elsewhere, expressed in monetary terms based on spot metals market prices?
• How sure are you that the entire gold reserves of the United States, as above, could be more than enough collateral for such a refinance of the National Debt as you envisage?
• What sort of interest payments would you envisage on such a debt-refinance issue? Are we to assume that interest would be payable in gold coin?
• How sure are you that such a debt-refinance issue would actually attract private (let alone financial-market and government) investors, stateside as much as overseas?
• What have you in mind to guarantee the repayment of interest in gold coin without having to sell gold holdings from time to time (e.g., to cover foreign-currency reserves)?
• How many others among the developed soverign states of the world do you know of as still issue government notes and debt securities backed solely by gold reserves, let alone the full faith and credit of the issuing governments? Have they missed any interest payments or otherwise gone into default on said issues, let alone having to sell gold holdings to meet interest payments? How many such securities are open to United States investors as dollar-denominated "yankee bonds"?
• Are we to expect that only "Christians" should be expected to underwrite a massive debt-refinance issue? What authority justifies such thinking?
• Would your agenda also include a call for reinstating the gold standard as the foundation of world monetary policy? How sure are you that such a mandate would actually control inflation, stabilise consumer prices and "encourage morality"?
• Over how long a period of time would you expect such a debt issue to last, especially when backed by gold reserves?
• How do we know you're not really selling us a bill of goods in Ponzi-scheme form, using "patriotism" to cover up Certain Weird and/or Unwholesome Indiscretions on your part (including alcoholism, dependency on narcotic or addicting drugs, sexual indiscretions or suffering from a loathsome disease)?

You know where to leave the answers.

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"EARTH TO GOP! EARTH TO GOP!!"

"...[I]t is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god. Such a man supposedly knows everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything, is infallible in his behavior."

Thus then-Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev opened his "Secret Speech," otherwise entitled "On the Personality Cult and Its Consequences," in closed session of the XX Communist Party Congress on 25 February 1956--the beginning of the end, as it were, for the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact/COMECON satellites, laying bare the worst excesses of power and authority carried out under Josef Stalin's regime (1929-53), invoking the Greater Glory of Socialism more often than not.

Replace "Marxism-Leninism" in the original with "Americanism," and you get a good idea of what the GOP under His Fraudulency, and its designs on maintaining a monopoly on power for all time (and excusing such as being for G-d and Country), is likely reducing America to. And what Mike Huckabee seems to have designs on in his Presidential aspirations, only with the added element of imagining himself as a super-divine up there with Imperial Japan until just after V-J Day (as in the Emperor being regarded as a divine figure in mortal form, upon whose person the common people were not allowed to gaze upon under pain of Divine Judgement).

The old "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" nonsense, as it were--which, come to think of it, could be a ruse for his achieving the proper aura of superdivinity by way of carrying three red lights.

@ least until Some Inconvenient Truths about Huckabee are exposed all the more to air and sunshine, eventually bringing about his campaign's collapse in disgrace--and leaving the Elmer Gantry Institute of Religiopolitical Theology @ a loss trying to come up with someone new who they can support as "Prophet, Seer and Revelator"-designate. And, unable to find someone within the two-party mainstream, likely turning to the backwaters of third-party fringe politics to find their Presidential ideal, which could serve only to throw Indecision 2008 into serious disarray, and then some. 

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COULD EVERYTHING OLD BE NEW AGAIN? In the wake of the meltdown in the "sub-prime" and "Alt-A" mortgage markets made all the more infamous by His Fraudulency's warped Zealotry and True Belief in capitalism with American characteristics as Great White Father, perhaps an old idea worth thinking anew might want to be the building society concept as a way of financing home mortgage loans to the working classes.

In particular, the "old school" concept based on installment shares (traditionally priced @ $1/share, payable monthly and repayable once payments and dividends equal $200/share), thereby ensuring a steady supply of funds as would cover mortgage-lending requirements.

Something worth thinking about as part of Indecision 2008-related thought.

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PROOF THAT "IT'S A SMALL WORLD, AFTER ALL," ALL THE MORE THESE DAYS: It's emerged that Australia's "Big Four" banking houses (ANZ, Commonwealth, NAB and Westpac) could stand to lose an aggregate A$850 million (about US$750 million/C$755.4 million/£382.26 million/€510.26 million/¥81.825 billion, all @ prevailing exchange rates) invested between them in American "sub-prime" mortgage lender Countrywide Home Loans, already awash in serious losses from loan delinquencies--and claims that they resorted to devious business practices in dealings with borrowers.

Which have led some "Down Under" to wonder if deposit runs could ensue within measurable distance.  

IT WAS ABOUT TIME HOLLYWOOD AWARD SHOWS BECAME MORE SENSIBLE FOR ONCE: The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, in solidarity with the Writers' Guild of America, has announced that this year's edition of the Golden Globe Awards will not be as glamourous as before owing to the current industrial action by the Writers' Guild.

In other words, the Golden Globes will be presented in a press conference stylee format rather than the more traditional high-class awards show worldcast.

Let it be a beginning, Your Correspondent thinks, for some common sense on the part of Hollywood when it comes to awards shows during the current awards silly season. Especially such as are traditionally worldcast on a massive scale, including the Academy Awards, the Grammy Awards, the American Music Awards, and both the Daytime and Prime Time Emmy Awards.

Meaning, in effect, that Hollywood ought to consider showing some solidarity with especially the Great Unwashed and make said awards shows more logical for once. As well, the respective organisers would do well to donate any savings thus realised by way of downsizing the awards shows to Reduction of the National Debt.

Likewise with any FreeVee networks carrying said awards shows; in this instance, should there turn out to be scenarios where advertisers are claiming dilution of audience numbers to the point of broadcasters having to offer "make-goods" to compensate, may I suggest that broadcasters donate an equivalent value of the advertising "make-goods" accordingly.

Such would be a good way for Hollywood to show some sense of Corporate Responsibility and Good Corporate Citizenship in the wake of certain misguided elements making highly-dubious claims about "reckless and utter disregard for American ideals and values" through subtle means in films and television programming, never mind the lack of any viable substantiation.

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WHY G-D'S OWN PARTY SEES CAPITALISM AS NECESSARY TO NATIONAL UNITY AS MUCH AS IDENTITY: Right Wing Watch, People For the American Way's blog as tracks developments on the Pseudoreligiopolitical Right, has this to say about GOP Presidential wannabe Mike Huckabee's notion of a "FAIR tax" (read: Goods and Services Tax/GST) supplanting income tax as one with "tax fairness:"

Mike Huckabee’s first-place finish in the Iowa Republican caucus was a victory for the Religious Right, after the combined efforts of a number of lesser-known right-wing figures eager to nominate one of their own. But while James Dobson and Richard Land issued cautious statements endorsing the victory if not the candidate, other national religious-right activists remained aloof, maintaining that Huckabee jeopardizes the vaunted right-wing coalition by alienating some of its partners, especially allies on the economic Right.

“I'm still skeptical that Mike Huckabee is the right man to speak for them because of his views on economics and foreign policy,” said Gary Bauer. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said Huckabee supporters “overlooked the fact he was not attractive to other members of the conservative coalition, and they said they don't care about us, and we don't care about them."

Indeed, these prominent religious-right activists are echoing people like Patrick Toomey of the Club for Growth, who called Huckabee the “John Edwards of the Republican Party,” FreedomWorks' Dick Armey ("Huckabee undermines the GOP's longstanding unity between its traditional and economic wings"), or American Enterprise Institute Vice President Harry Olsen. Toomey’s Club has done the most to convince Republicans of Huckabee’s alleged tax-hiking heresy, running anti-Huckabee ads heavily in Iowa since the summer.

(Your Correspondent would like to ask @ this time where the defence of free-market capitalism with American characteristics is to be seen as that of Traditional Christian Moral and Familial Values, not to mention the "antient and pecuilar" soverignty and soverign identity of the United States, and vice versa, consistent with the conservative belief, Orwellian stylee, that slogans can be made reversible as circumstances require.)

Huckabee himself has played up this reputation as a populist, deriding the “Club for Greed” and talking about “the growing angst in the middle class.”

While many pundits seem to have accepted this presentation, it’s important to separate style from substance: When it comes to economic policy, Huckabee has arguably been running to the right of any of his major opponents.

Key to jumpstarting Huckabee’s surge in Iowa, along with conservative homeschoolers, was his early embrace of a little-known right-wing group called FairTax.org, which proposes replacing all income taxes with a 23 percent national sales tax. FairTax sent at least 20 buses full of people to the Ames straw poll in August, where Huckabee finished a surprising second-place, and the group almost went broke in the fall working the campaign.

(Your Correspondent begs to ask, @ this time, whether FairTax's buses actually included substantial numbers coming from interstate, using pickup points in the border cities of Dubuque, Davenport, Muscatine, Burlington, Ft. Madison, Keokuk, Council Bluffs [itself right next to Omaha] and Sioux City--and coordinating such with as much precision as the traditional Japanese kabuki drama to avoid attracting suspicions in certain quarters.)

Huckabee sells the plan with a populist flair, promising to abolish the IRS and put in place a “progressive” system that would be less for everybody while rewarding “hard work and thrift.” However, the substance doesn't quite match the rhetoric.

Economists and observers on the right and left have mocked the FairTax plan as “politically unrealistic and mathematically impossible.” The 23 percent number, for example, seems to be an obvious ruse to disguise what is in fact a 30 percent tax. (Here’s how that works: adding a $30 tax to a $100 purchase is what anyone would call a 30 percent tax – but the “FairTax” folks say that $30 is only 23 percent of the new total cost of $130.)

Even that number is not sufficient to meet current government spending, which would also be taxed under the plan: Supporters include the tax government agencies would themselves pay when computing revenue but not when calculating spending. Other estimates put the required sales tax rate to meet current spending at above 50 percent.

But beyond the legerdemain and “fantasy” numbers put out by FairTax, the plan for a national sales tax—which would ignore corporate income and capital gains as well as wages—is most vulnerable to criticism that it hits the poor and middle class hardest. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist who worked in the Reagan administration, wrote that under the FairTax plan, “there would be an enormous shift in the tax burden from the wealthy to those with lower and middle incomes.” As Money magazine explained:

Let's say a hedge fund manager has a good year and earns $1 billion. If he can somehow manage to scrape by spending, say, $100 million, the other $900 million is tax free. He'll have paid about 2% of his income in taxes that year.

Such a scheme is far more regressive than the current income tax, and no other candidate has proposed anything so radical. Nevertheless, Huckabee continues to employ the FairTax plan as part of his “populist” image, which pundits and his right-wing opponents alike—not to mention religious-right leaders—have bought into.

May I remind readers @ this time that no country which has implemented Value-Added Tax (VAT) or Goods and Services Tax (GST) to raise revenue has yet to generate sufficent revenue by this means to seriously consider having consumption-based taxation supplant income taxation--especially so where VAT is applied; evidence suggests that VAT, which is computed under a rather complex formula @ the several stages of manufacturing, warehousing and distribution, only worsens the potential for smuggling and the sale of counterfeit goods.

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FROM THE "THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER THE PAST," USW., DOSSIER: Religious Right Watch calls our attention to these remarks of the GOP's star-crossed 1964 Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater about the consequences of Church and GOP becoming all too closely intertwined:

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible [N4BSK] problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.

[***]

The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom.... I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are?... I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism." 

Have we forgotten, dear reader, the warnings of history?

(Think George Santayana's remarks that "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.")  

TORNADOES THIS EARLY IN JANUARY DOESN'T SEEM QUITE RIGHT: Just last night, a good portion of the Midwest was caught up in unusually-early episodes of tornadic activity for the time of year.

In a swath extending from Branson, Missouri to Kenosha, Wisconsin (for the sake of approximation), major tornadic activity was encountered last night alone in five states, killing two people in Missouri, reducing houses in Wisconsin and Illinois to foundations, disrupting a murder trial when the courthouse had to be evacuated and derailing a locomotive and 12 freight cars, two of which contained hazardous materials; leaks in one car as contained brake fluid caused fumes which forced the evacuation of a nearby unincoroprated community.

In any case, these were the first January tornadoes in Wisconsin since 1967 and the first such in Illinois since 1950, according to weather records.

Meanwhile, around the Minnwissippi region where Your Correspondent resideth, the situation has been fog aggravated by rapidly-melting snow in the face of unseasonably mild conditions--in turn, triggering the risk of ice jams on tributary streams aggravated by all-too-rapid snow melt conditions.

It makes you wonder whether we may already be seeing what Al Gore's been warning us about all along.

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CONSERVATIVE ZEALOT/TRUE BELIEVER PROJECTION ALERT: It's well-known that clauses in a number of oaths taken here in the United States require a willingness to support and defend the same "against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

On the latter do I wish to address this item.

For some reason, the Zealots and True Believers in the conservative propaganda camp love to claim that liberal- or Progressive-leaning causes and their True Believers should be seen as "sworn enemies" of the United States, and, hence, ought be regarded with fear, loathing and suspicion.

And, if need be, being subject to what may turn out being malicious prosecution for treason, especially when the conservative propaganda machine lacks compelling evidence to prove that the acts of "treason" in question meet the constitutionally-defined standard in Article III, section III(a) of the United States such (as in "making war against the United States, or, in adherence to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort").

Let alone the prospect that such "evidence" may be coerced, perjured or otherwise based on hearsay.

Which leaves Your Correspondent wondering if these specimens of hyperconservative Zealotry and True Belief, in questioning such as are exercising constitutionally-protected guarantees of free speech and press absent declaration of a State of Emergency dictating suspension of civil liberties, are actually engaging in projection--as in shifting blame on others to avoid attracting suspicion on themselves.

Somehow, the conservative propaganda machine should consider themselves as enemies of the United States for all they've been doing to sow discord and enmity in especially Those Who Should Know Better.

Not to mention suggesting that the hoi polloi should accept the conservative line "without question or reservation"--in other words, practice a willful and deliberate orthodoxy (or, in Orwellian Newspeak, being "goodthoughtful") as excuses stupidity, excusing said stupidity as necessary for G-d, Country and Family.

=============

Besides, it only takes just one mentally-disturbed person @ the likes of a conservative-sponsored media event (or, for that matter, some "music show" of the Branson model idealised by the forces of cultural conservatism as Amerikanischer Realkultur's acme and perfection) to cause trouble as can get out of hand and cause civil disorder, chaos--or worse.

History has shown this to be a fact.

And don't expect such a possibility to be the monopoly of liberals or Progressives: Conservative Zealotry and True Belief, and the propaganda of same, can easily be enough to appeal to certain weird and unwholesome elements who could turn out being mentally unstable enough to disrupt things. Especially so those among the target audiences of the ilk of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Fox Noise (as in poor, undereducated or homeschooled and easily-influenced "white trash") who could easily be set up to carry out disruptive acts, deeds and exploits which could "officially" be labelled as Notorious Terrorist Acts dictating a State of Emergency.

All the while taking devious or unscrupulous advantage of their mental state being easily subject to exploitation.

Followed by the real perp(s) being given safe passage into Canada, along with regular remittances conditional upon their silence in what transpired, paid off through "pure trusts" based offshore "for tax reasons," to use a rather lame bromide.

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LET THIS BE A WARNING, EVEN IF FROM "DOWN UNDER:" India's current test cricket series against Australia has been mired in a racist spat which nearly threatened to suspend the series after India's XI threatened to return home in the wake of racist comments from Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh directed @ Australian counterpart Andrew Symonds.

For which remarks Singh was handed a three-Test suspension by the International Cricket Council for conduct detrimental to the sport and racist behaviour, in whose wake the Board of Control for Cricket in India (the Indian governing body therefor) threatened to suspend their current Test series with Australia unless the suspension was reversed--until calmer heads prevailed.

(The Board of Control is appealing the ICC's ruling, mostly out of national honour.)

Let this be a warning for all of sport, never mind arguments about racism being necessary to the defence of "national honour and identity."  

MEMO TO CERTAIN ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS ON THE "EDUCATIONAL" FRONT: Especially so those among you questioning the legality, statutory or otherwise, of free public education just to push the likes of questionable supplantation in such guises as "school choice" and Christian homeschooling--

First off, may I remind you of the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Which extends, inter alii, to educational matters.

With that in mind, and for the sake of example, may I call your attention to the likes of clauses 1 and 2, Article XIII, of the Minnesota  Constitution:

Section 1. UNIFORM SYSTEM OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state.

Sec. 2. PROHIBITION AS TO AIDING SECTARIAN SCHOOL. In no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect are promulgated or taught.

If you need another example, let me call your attention to Article X, clause 3, of Wisconsin's Constitution:

The legislature shall provide by law for the establishment of district schools, which shall be as nearly uniform as practicable; and such schools shall be free and without charge for tuition to all children between the ages of 4 and 20 years; and no sectarian instruction shall be allowed therein; but the legislature by law may, for the purpose of religious instruction outside the district schools, authorize the release of students during regular school hours.

As if that weren't enough, consider Iowa's Constitution, article IX, part 1, clause 15 (in perintent part):

The general assembly shall have power to***provide for the educational interest of the state in any other manner that to them shall seem best and proper.

What have you to say now, confronted with evidence by example?

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AND THEY STILL SAY AMERICAN CULTURE IS "MORALLY SUPERIOR" TO ALL OTHERS: The military junta who governs the so-called Union of Myanmar recently announced that it was raising the annual excise on satellite dish receivers from the equivalent of US$5 to US$800--this, perhaps, out of fear that Knowledge (especially coming from overseas) must be some class of a Loathsome Disease as threatens the antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity of the Union of Myanmar.

(More than likely, such should be read as threatening the Divine Right of the status quo.)

For 2008, the BBC's annual licence fee for owners of colour TV sets between Land's End and John O'Groats is set @ £135.50 (equivalent to US$268.29; payable monthly, that works out to £11.29 [US$22.35]/month); black-and-white set owners pay a licence fee of £45.50 (US$90.08).

And yet the forces of cultural conservative Zealotry and True Belief see public television and radio as "failed social experiments***unlikely to continue generating taxpayer value"!

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NO WONDER THE LOU DOBBS CROWD MUST BE DROOLING IN ENVY: Russian migration authorities have announced where, in the interest of "protecting the jobs of native Russians," the annual quota for migrant workers from the Commonwealth of Independent States (as in the former Soviet Republics since becoming soverign in their own right) seeking work in Mother Russia in 2008 is to be cut by two-thirds; i.e., from 6 million permits last year to just 2 million this year.

How do we know the Zealots and True Believers aren't seriously considering similar measures when it comes to foreign guest workers on J2 student visas as part of their "hidden agenda" for Indecision 2008?

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AAAHHH, THE WONDERS OF PSEUDOSCIENCE (AND THEN SOME): When it comes to pseudoscience, or--for that matter--perversion of scientific thought and belief, perhaps one of the weirdest branches thereof would have to be the belief that the Soviet Union and its "fraternal sister republics" had about historical research being one with scientific such.

"Historical Science," as it were.

The which could be considered a likely defence among such engaging in Holocaust denial and their cousins among the apologists for apartheid South Africa and/or Rhodesia (the latter since restyled Zimbabwe), Nazi Germany and the Confederate States of America, in case questions start being asked in Certain Scholarly Circles.

Case in point for perverting science along "historical" lines: The so-called "Institute for Historical Review," itself rather notorious in its time for trying to pervert history based on "scientific" models to challenge whether Nazi Germany's "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" (as in The Holocaust) ever happened, let alone whether some six million Jews from across Nazi-occupied or -controlled areas of Europe were killed off in the name of Hitler, Germany and an idealised "Aryan Master Race."

(I say "in its time" because, in recent years, the Institute has fallen into serious disarray following lawsuits charging that its true properitors--in particular Willis Carto, himself a major player in the cause of hate and extremism thanks to his so-called "Liberty Lobby" and the now-defunct hate tabloid weekly The Spotlight--misused Institute funds and diverted them to personal or otherwise improper use. As if that weren't enough, its pseudoscholarly journal, The Journal of Historical Review, has been in concurrent hiatus; likewise with their annual conferences featuring the creme de la creme of Holocaust denial, Nazi apologia and "patriotic" racism and anti-Semitism.)

How much longer before the Neocon/Fascisti element starts resorting to "historical science" as a propaganda weapon?  

SINCLAIR LEWIS COULD BE WRONG: Civil disorder and violence in Pakistan following the "insider" assaination of opposition leader Benazhir Bhutto has threatened to undermine the likelihood of Parliamentary elections within measurable distance without their being seriously undermined.

Meanwhile, in Kenya, a church was firebombed with some 30 people holed up inside to escape post-election violence triggered by rumours of the result having been rigged or manipulated by the Nairobi powers-that-be to favour the status quo and its climate of corruption, cronyism and worse.

Which is enough to wonder if America's Indecision 2008 could be marred by displays of Extreme Ultraviolence which turn out to have been cooked up by goon squads with connexions to His Fraudulency's "inside of the inside" (some sort of a "redemption for value" scam, perhaps?)--all the while officially explained as Notorious Terrorist Acts, never mind where the real perps are suddenly given safe passage to some third country on fake passports and substantial payoffs to keep the whole quiet.

In any case, compelling His Fraudulency to suspend the elections "in the interest of maintaining public order and safety," handing over law and order, in effect, to the inmates of the asylum--as in "vigilance committees" predominated by the weird and unwholesome and with mindsets up there with the Ku Klux Klan and The Black Legion as mandate their highly-secretive regalia in carrying out their exercises in racially-selective "law-and-order" sadisto under cloak of darkness.

Themselves paid off by--you guessed it--"the inside of the inside."

Remember, folks, "it CAN happen here."

And remember, too, that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

But such is no excuse to justify sadisto misadventures with racist overtures, especially where Al Cohol (usually "strong" beer) comes into the argument.

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IF YOU THINK AMTRAK SHOULD BE EUTHANISED AS A FAILED SOCIAL EXPERIMENT ...: One of the pet arguments of the K Street crowd is that the national passenger rail operator Amtrak should be put out of its misery "for the sake of the good taxpayers***seeing no real or viable taxpayer value" in maintaining rail passenger service.

In the process, expecting the motorcoach industry, "out of the goodness of its heart," to step in and provide "more cost-efficent" services intercity.

Unfortunately, however, such thinking would only benefit, for the most part, Greyhound, which itself is seeing its motorcoach network truncated wholesale to save themselves any chance of profitability, leaving many smaller communities without other decent transportation options save for shared-taxi or van services as would provide connexions to the nearest city of consequence still lucky to have Greyhound services.

Or, for that matter, Megabus, which offers cheap (as little as $1 one-way, with advanced reservations) motorcoach services on "hub-and-spoke" networks in the Midwest (based out of Chicago) and West Coast (based out of Los Angeles).

And let's not forget the Chinese motorcoach services (known in the Chinese by a term which translates into the colourful-sounding "wild chicken trucks") operating along the Northeast Corridor, by and large.

What exactly would it take to force a forced-matrix brand of motorcoach competition as would satisfy K Street in these circumstances?

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GERMAN EFFICENCY IS WONDERFUL DEPARTMENT: One of the more popular character traits often cited among the Germans is that which holds where the Germans are masters of efficency to the highest degree.

And perhaps the best examples of German efficency I can come across would have to be in the oral-hygiene department, particularly when it comes to mouth rinse. When you get right down to it, the Germans have it worked out so that just a few drops of concentrated mouth rinse, added to water, does as effective a job in getting rid of bad breath (including "morning breath") as already-prepared brands like Listerine, Scope and Lavoris.

And you get value for money in the bargain: Just one bottle of mouth rinse concentrate, when diluted with water according to directions, will go longer than a large-size bottle of straight Listerine. And the compact size of the bottle means less to pack when you travel.

Fortunately for Your Correspondent, The Exaggerator is proud to be affiliated with Smallflower.com, the online version of Chicago's famous Merz Apothecary, where you can buy such esteemed German brands of mouth rinse concentrate like Odol and Nur 1 Tropfen (One Drop Only), which you can find out more about by clicking on the image as meets your fancy: